Relief Effort
by allakimbo
Summary: Because nothing ever dies in scifi.


Farscape and all associated characters is the property of Jim Henson Productions and Hallmark Entertainment, not I.

Set immediately after the Peacekeeper Wars...because nothing ever dies in sci-fi.

* * *

**Relief Effort **

The low hum of the engines of the medical vessel drifted throughout the incubation chamber, more a soft vibration than a sound, really. Had not the majority of occupants already been unconscious it would surely have had a quiescent effect on them. Row after row they stretched, from dozens of worlds, enemies and allies. The _Tciveir_, donated by the peoples of a medical colony unscathed by the war, was the first envoy of the new peace, forcing those of all agendas to be temporarily housed in close proximity to one another as the doctors and healers dealt with the unwanted aftermath of bloody conflict.

Dr. Karaysa ran a hand through her thick blue hair, tucking it firmly behind her delicate tapered ears. Her eyes adjusted perfectly to the low lighting in the room—the illumination on her home planet was normally even dimmer than the shadowy room in which she now stood—and picked up the chart at the foot of the nearest bed.

Luxan. Puncture wound, mid-chest cavity. Unlikely to survive, like so many others. His vitals hadn't changed for the past seven solar days and he was clinging weakly to life support. When he's been brought aboard the medical ship he'd been dead. After his initial resuscitation he'd died once more during the surgery to close his internal lacerations and repair the damage to his circulatory system. Amazingly he had responded to a second resuscitation attempt and had held on long enough to get hooked up to the tiny breathing machine that currently covered the lower half of his face.

And what for? Karaysa wondered. His chances of survival now were slim and even if he did survive, who knew what physical or mental scars his injuries would leave behind? The second Luxan, found inside the great temple structure, had been too far gone to last longer than a few minutes past his initial treatment. This one, found further away and surrounded by spent firearms, was likely to follow suit today or tomorrow.

She hated to be so grim, especially as everyone else seemed to be brimming with the hope of a new era of peace. She could not easily forget, however, the consequences of a war she and her colleagues aboard the medical vessel were reminded of every day in the form of dead and dying soldiers and civilians. This Luxan was one of many—one of thousands—who had passed through this ship alone. He was nameless and faceless to her and she was numb to the miracle of his present survival. She had been disappointed by miracles too many times already during this relief effort.

Sighing, Karaysa replaced the chart. A tiny voice in her mind wished the Luxan well even as the rest of her had already moved on to assessing the next patient.

* * *

She didn't come across the Luxan again until over a weeken later—he'd been moved to another section, one with other comatose but stable patients. Examining his chart again, she noted that he'd been responding moderately well to blood transfusions and supplemental nutrient injections. Still not a lot of hope, but he now had a fighting chance of survival…as a vegetable. He was non-responsive to all sentience tests thus far and his brain scans still revealed dangerously little activity. 

This time the little voice in her mind wished him well before she moved on. She supposed that the medical professional in her couldn't help but hope for the best. Before she could ponder this further her attention was called away by a Sebacean in the next section who was having a violent reaction to his limb grafts. Forgotten, the Luxan went on at his own pace, quietly breathing and surviving.

* * *

His Qualta blade, she realized. His Qualta blade was missing. Karaysa read back through the inventory of items that had been found near his inert body. Many of the people they had rescued had come in without any form of identification so the medical staff had taken to keeping detailed records of the circumstances of their discovery as well as the usual physical markers. 

The blade's absence was curious—most Luxans literally went to their graves with their Qualta blades. Probably a trophy for some roaming Scarran or Charrid, Karaysa thought uncharitably, then shook the thought from her mind. She had, after all, both Charrid and Scarran patients. They deserved her objective attention as much as the Peacekeepers, Luxans, and even the Hynerian mercenaries currently being kept in an aquatic bay. Perhaps he'd never had a blade, she reasoned, picking up his chart once more.

Over the past ten solar days his brain had been slowly healing, eventually responding to moderate and then even minimal stimuli. His blood was still thick and dark around his scabbed wound, but regular transfusions were keeping his internal organs functioning and his circulation pumping.

She no longer knew what to expect. Maybe it was the winding down of the frantic relief efforts, maybe it was seeing many of her patients leave the ship on their own two (or three, or four, or eight) legs, but she had been feeling much more optimistic lately. After all, he hadn't died yet, and his brain seemed to be healing itself. One of the healers, a strange woman with lanky hair and cryptic tattoos covering all four of her arms, had told her that the only objective of medicine was to buy time—time for the patient's body to do what it wanted to do naturally: heal itself. Karaysa didn't know if she agreed with that sentiment, but perhaps for this patient it was true. Medicine certainly hadn't healed him—he could, and should, have died at any point in his first solar days aboard—but given time and help his body seemed to be regaining its natural equilibrium.

Replacing the chart at the foot of his bed, she checked the nutrient flow tubes creeping into one of his arms and the waste removal tubes going out the other. His breathing seemed easy and regulated. Maybe tomorrow he would show more signs of improvement, she thought, and wondered briefly at what point she had stopped seeing tomorrow as a harbinger of doom and started seeing it as a horizon of potential.

Were her species prone to smiling, she would have done so as she moved on to the next patient, sedated but improving in his condition. Behind her, unaware of the musings of his doctor and the struggles of his fellow patients, the Luxan's eyes slowly fluttered open.


End file.
